Will Yankees` Next Manager Pay Attention?

August 17, 1987|By Frank Dolson, Knight-Ridder Newspapers.

NEW YORK — The Yankees returned home this weekend. You could tell. Vultures were circling above Yankee Stadium. Okay, maybe they were unusually large pigeons, but to Lou Piniella they must have looked like vultures.

Once again, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner has arranged it so the firing of a manager will come as blessed relief to the victim. It`s the days and weeks and months leading up that drive the man half crazy.

Of course, Piniella should have known what was coming. There`s no excuse not to know unless you`ve been out of the country the last 14 years. Steinbrenner`s record is clear. Since taking over the Yankees, he`s made 13 managerial changes. The baseball world is filled with scarred survivors of his pinstriped Reign of Terror, at least one of whom warned Piniella to prepare himself for what he--or any Yankees manager--must face.

``I talk to Lou every once in a while,`` Cubs manager Gene Michael, who served two relatively brief tours of duty as Steinbrenner`s favorite whipping boy, was saying the other day. ``I told him what to expect. He said, `I thought it would be different with me.` Why should it be different for anyone that takes that job?``

Perhaps Piniella can be excused for dreaming. He and Steinbrenner had a great relationship when Lou was playing for the Yankees, leading the one-time outfielder to foolishly think the relationship would continue when he became manager.

``Yeah,`` Michael said, ``I thought things would be different my second year, too.``

Michael learned otherwise. Now it`s Piniella`s turn. Heck, Billy Martin has managed Steinbrenner`s Yankees four times, and it wouldn`t surprise anybody if it became five when this latest farce runs its course, a possibility that almost surely would not be in the best interests of either Martin or the Yankees.

It didn`t seem like a particularly funny line, but the Cubs` manager roared with laughter.

``That`s the worst thing,`` he finally said. ``Whenever George used to say, `You know, Billy`s really looking good,` you could bet that he was going to give him the job again. Billy`d look good coming in. A month later, he looked like a haggard, old ghost--so tired, beat up, drawn.``

In other words, sort of like how Lou Piniella looks now. How could you expect him to look otherwise? He`s working for a man who doesn`t simply fire his victims; he tortures them, teases them, verbally and psychologically abuses them, toys with them like a cat with a mouse before putting them out of their misery.

Inevitably, Steinbrenner engages in open warfare with his managers in the New York press, which delights in carrying the gory details of this never-ending soap opera to the masses. On Friday, when the Yankees staggered home from a 2-8 trip that dropped them from first to third in the American League East, one New York tabloid devoted the front and back pages to what it termed ``The Yankee Wars.``

Steinbrenner had done it again, knocked the hated Mets to the inside pages, made his Yankees the talk of New York. In the process, however, he may have killed his team`s chances in the pennant race. Hey, nobody said publicity came cheap.

``George is looking at it from the perspective of a fan,`` said noted author and ex-outfielder Jay Johnstone.

Johnstone knew from experience. He had just joined the Yankees in 1978 when Steinbrenner delivered an impassioned speech to a club in danger of falling hopelessly out of the race.

``We`d just lost two out of three to California,`` Jay recalled, ``and we were, I think, 14 games out. He came down to the clubhouse and he screamed and he hollered. He said he`d get rid of all of us, bring up Triple-A players to finish the season. I was sitting next to Gene Michael and he told me, `You haven`t seen anything yet.`

``But nobody worried about it. We just went out and played baseball and had fun.``

Maybe those Yankee players--Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, Piniella and Co.--could do that. They mounted a furious, second-half drive and wound up as world champions in `78. From all indications, these Yankees are different. They aren`t winning in response to Steinbrenner`s ravings and rantings, and they certainly aren`t having fun watching Piniella twisting and turning in the headlines.

Remember, this isn`t Billy Martin getting prepared for the kill; this is a manager they genuinely like, a man who has kept them at or near the top all season despite a shortage of quality pitching and key injuries. Surely, the slow torture that Piniella said is tearing his heart out pains some of them, too.

Still, it goes on. The Boss wasn`t here Friday night to greet his free-falling heroes on their return home. He was up in Saratoga, N.Y., driving in a celebrity harness race, fooling around with horses while his ball club was going to the dogs.